Wireless mesh systems conventionally do not commonly employ the known Carrier Sense Media Access Control/Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol because it cannot prevent collision of packets from “hidden nodes”. For example, assume that a first node “A” and a second node “C” are each within wireless range of a third node “B”, but nodes A and C are out of wireless range from each other. Since nodes A and C cannot hear each other, in the event both nodes attempt to send a wireless signal/packet to node B at the same time, the signals would collide and corrupt each other, rendering the received signal at node B incomprehensible. Because nodes A and C cannot hear each other, adding the current CSMA/CA protocol to the nodes would not have resolved the collision issue, as nodes A and C each had no indication of transmission by the other node. In other words, even if all nodes are equipped with carrier sensing capabilities, which would allow them to sense if another node is transmitting, this carrier sensing cannot help avert collisions of packets from hidden nodes such as A and C (hidden to each other).